May 2013

UPDATE: Turns out that someone at Nintendo Germany screwed up. The executive editor of IGN just tweeted that he re-confirmed with SEGA that the third mystery title won’t release in 2013. Guess we’ll have to make due with only two new Sonic games on Nintendo platforms this year, unless you count the 3DS version of Lost World as a seperate game. Sorry for the confusion folks.

Turns out we may not have to wait that long to know what it is. According to Sonic Stadium, Nintendo Germany spilled today in a press release that all three exclusives will be released this year. That sure is a lot of Sonic games for Nintendo haters to be pissed about in a single year. Of course this also means we probably won’t have to wait that long to know what this incredibly mysterious and secret game is. E3 is just around the corner, so it wouldn’t be surprising at all if it’d be announced there.

Earlier this month, Japan saw the arrival of SEGA’s first set of 3DS Classic remakes of four key titles from their Mega Drive and arcade library. Sonic The Hedgehog, Altered Beast, Super Hang-On, and Space Harrier all received a 3D-depth face lift and plenty of other features, but SEGA remained quiet as to if these titles would make their way to western 3DS systems.

Enter the Australian Classifications Board, which posted up ratings results for 3DS versions of Sonic and Altered Beast. In the past, every time the ACB has released ratings for games, the titles sooner or later swept across other regions, so the fact SEGA’s 3DS Classics library is likely going global shouldn’t surprise anyone.

It’s not quite the Christian “Taxman” Whitehead and Head Cannon release of Sonic 1 that iOS and Android platforms saw, but it’s still a Sonic 1 for those that want yet another copy of the game.

I always have fun reminiscing about good times with old friends. Tonight is one of those special nights where I stumbled around on that wide, worldly web called the Internet, in search of ancient Sonic the Hedgehog fan websites/webrings to talk about. A specific website of old, sonic-club.net, was something I wanted to share. As with all good things, it has seen it’s end. Removing the dash, however, has brought my attention to something… very special, and I wanted to share it with you all. Ladies and gentleman, straight from Nagoya, Japan, where anything can happen:

Yes, this is a real place. However, people in the video are speaking Portuguese, because the club decided to have a Portuguese-themed night, I guess! If you look closely, you might see Sonic Team doing lines of cocaine off of Sonic’s quills.

Update: Screenshots of the Wii U and 3DS version and a preview with loads of details have been uploaded to IGN. The preview can be read here, the screenshots can be found below.

IGN just uploaded the debut trailer for Sonic Lost World, showing what the six guardians look like (surprise: they’re evil aliens!), but more importantly the new gameplay style. This isn’t just more of the same of what was seen in Sonic Unleashed, Colours and Generations. This also adds elements from Super Mario Galaxy and the cancelled Sonic X-treme into the mix.

Also note-able is that the game has a new beautiful plasticine-like style. Those who have wanted an incredibly stylized Sonic game (like me) will probably be very pleased by how this turned out. In addition, Flickies are back. Sonic Lost World will be out this fall exclusively on Wii U and 3DS.

Last week there were a couple of comments on a Sonic Stadium article that claimed the Sonic Facebook page accidentally revealed that Sonic Lost World will be unveiled on May 29th and that the game would feature six guardians of the Lost World who may or may not be evil. There was no proof that this Facebook post was actually made so we automatically assumed it was fake…

Turns out that rumors that can’t be backed up can actually be true sometimes. SEGA made a Facebook post confirming that the rumor along with this teaser image showing the silhouettes of the six cartoony alien guardians who may be evil. Of course, because Takashi Iizuka is working on this game and he worked on Sonic games that featured evil aliens, these aliens can definitely be nothing else but very evil.

Less than a week ago, Sonic 1 received a Taxman/Stealth makeover for mobile platforms. The updated port has already cracked the Top 10 Paid Apps list in the US for both Google Play and the iOS App Store at #2 and #8, respectively. As we covered earlier, there are a ton of bonus features that more than warrant its $2.99 price tag. We encourage you to purchase the app, which you can find in the links below. After the jump you will also find some screenshots showcasing some of the bonus features (slight spoilers).

Retro user Orengefox posted on the forums his discovery of two Japanese prototypes of Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 on Sega Dreamcast. Both of which have a potential source of content that are missing from the final builds with the Sonic Adventure Auto Demo showing some good promise. Continue Reading

This is the picture I took the last time I was ever with him. I’m still amazed that he managed to make that domino tower while drunk.

What can you say about Jimmy? He had a goofy sense of humor, hilarious to some, aggravating to others, but I don’t think anyone would deny that he was a man of charisma and fun. He was the most reckless guy I’ve ever met in my life, that’s for sure. He lived and died with the spirit of fucking around.

I’d known Jimmy for a good 5 years. During the lead-up to Sonic Unleashed, he was 50% of the reason I decided to check out Sonic Retro in the first place. Last fall, in the span of about 24 hours, he drove to Louisiana and became my roommate and hang-out buddy. There were ups and downs, but we had the time of our lives. Unfortunately, he couldn’t maintain the rent and moved back to his home in Pennsylvania. My chief concern about it a couple weeks ago was that he and I didn’t get to go see Iron Man 3 in theaters like we had planned… now that he’s dead, I have to get it through my head that I’ll never see him ever again.

Though he leaves this world today, he will live on in the Sonic community through the best hack ever and the phrase “assface Sonic”, which he coined.